by MARK SLUTSKY

Don't expect any miracles. If you consider yourself even a minor Star Wars fan, if you eagerly waited almost two decades for George Lucas to deliver his much-vaunted prequels, if you went to see The Phantom Menace on opening day and emerged from the theatre wondering what the hell you just spent two hours looking at, if you thought Attack of the Clones was marginally better yet still terrible, if you anticipated the new one with great trepidation but felt your hopes stoked by the great trailer and Lucas's proclamations that the last in the series would be darker, moodier, more important, "Titanic in space," ... well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is just as much of a sham as the other prequels are and don't let anyone tell you different - this movie sucks.

The implicit promise in the marketing of Sith has been that after sitting through all that stuff about tariff disputes, trade embargoes, snooze-worthy senate "intrigue" and endless Jedi board meetings, the final episode is somehow going to make everything okay again, make us forget Jar Jar Binks, Jake Lloyd, the poo jokes - make us care again. The Sith trailers even give one hope that the drama and the mythology, let alone the wit, of the original series might finally be rekindled. I wish.

Droid division

But at least this episode starts with a bang: "WAR!" proclaims the series' famous title crawl. What's behind this conflict? Anybody's guess, really. As much of a nerd as I can be about this kind of stuff, I'm still baffled by what exactly these Clone Wars are - something about a "separatist" (ha ha) robot faction... and they don't like the clones... and...

Anyway, as the movie begins, these separatist droids have kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who is secretly behind all this. Not that the Jedis, with all their brilliance and psychic powers, can figure out that the guy who looks just like him but wears a black cowl over part of his face is the same dude. Future Vader Anakin "Annie" Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), and mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) are sent in to rescue Palpatine, kick-starting the movie with a cartoony space dogfight that I'll grudgingly admit is visually impressive, though strangely uninvolving at the same time.

After a totally unfair fight (two dudes versus one old guy) with Count Dooku (Christopher Lee), the Chancellor orders Annie to execute the Count. This is the first in a series of bad stuff our anti-hero gets up to in the movie. Later, Skywalker is assigned to monitor the Chancellor, and soon falls under the jerk's sway after a series of nightmares, in which his secret wife (Natalie Portman) is dying. The only way Anakin can save his beloved, Palpatine implies, is if he surrenders to a certain dark side of a certain Force...

Star bores

From there, all manner of things start to go wrong for our Jedi, and for the galaxy in general. The problem is, Lucas hasn't gotten any better at making us care about these wooden characters, even if they're presented in front of spectacularly rendered CGI backdrops (that still look like cartoons, by the way). The acting and the dialogue is just as flat as it was in the first two movies and the dramatic scenes feel like those TV "Canadian Heritage" moments. Yeah, the movie is "dark," but who cares when everyone in it is such a loser? In the original series the bad guys were scary; here they're just dicks. And, without giving anything away, Lucas totally cops out of the one truly disturbing moment the movie could have had.

Now I'll admit to some moments of nostalgia while watching Revenge of the Sith. I mean, up there on the screen were my beloved Storm Troopers, Yoda (doing his Gummy-Bear-bouncing-off-the-wall act again), Chewbacca (for like five seconds), Anakin turning into Darth freaking Vader! All the stuff Star Wars fans have always wanted to see is here... and yet, at the same time, it's so bad and so boring. I guess my only solace is knowing that the series has finally been put out of its misery once and for all. Rest in peace, Star Wars.

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is now playing

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